Here is a video giving a small taste of the Manchester Sitcom Trials, July 20 2012.

The Manchester Sitcom Trials team, July 2012 was Jog Maher, Christine Dalby, Amir Rahimzadeh, Lisa Connor, Michael Loftus and actor-producer Michelle Ashton, hosted by Trials creator Kev F (just out of shot)

The running order was:

Thrift Collection by Graeme & Nicky Knowles
My Best Mate by Bob Ferris
End Of The Line by Oliver Ley
Post Docs by Eoin Carney
Games Night by Ed Campbell

The Sitcom Trials is planned to return to London, Manchester and Bristol in October, watch this space for news.

Scripts invited for Bristol Sitcom Trials Halloween Special

Having sold out the last two shows, and garnered 4 star reviews, the Bristol Sitcom Trials will be back with a special Halloween show on Friday 19th October at the Wardrobe Theatre.

We're looking for TWO SCRIPTS to perform as part of a line-up of five brand new spooky sitcoms, and you're all invited to submit material (the other three sitcoms will be written by the Bristol team of writers and performers).

Since this is a Halloween show, we're specifically looking for the spooky, the supernatural and the macabre. You can re-write an existing sitcom, tailored to the Halloween theme; or you can come up with something new.

Scripts should be NO MORE THAN 15 pages long, with a solid and exciting CLIFFHANGER around the 8-10 page mark.

If you want to enter a script, simply upload your scripts to the SitsVac files. First read The Brief below for guidelines.

If you have any questions about The Sitcom Trials you can ask at The Sits Vac Forum
or Facebook

Scripts should be written to be performed with NO PROPS, SETS or COSTUMES - we're going minimalist on this occasion, since the last show nearly killed us. Ideally, we'd like ONE CONTINUOUS PIECE OF ACTION, with no scene changes, and with no more than SIX CHARACTERS. One day we won't need to say this, but please please please write some strong female characters.

The deadline is: Friday 21st August.

There will be a week of voting (usual rules apply: YES=2 / MAYBE=1 / NO=-1), and then the cast will read the top five scripts at a meeting on Sunday 2nd September, and we'll decide which two will make the show. All writers (and performers) are welcome to attend our meetings, particularly if they buy us drinks.

Vince Stadon
Producer
Sitcom Trials Bristol

Scripts ALSO invited for Manchester Sitcom Trials Halloween Special

Isn't it marvellous? You wait 13 years for a Sitcom Trials Halloween Special, and then two come along at once. Yes, hot on the heels of the announcement of the Bristol Sitcom Trials Halloween Special on Friday 19th October, we are pleased to announce the Manchester Sitcom Trials will be performing a Halloween Special the following night, Saturday October 20th, as part of the Manchester Comedy Festival. And we are looking for scripts.

Both the Bristol and the Manchester shows will be selecting their scripts to perform from the same online entries, so you only have to enter once to have double the chance of seeing your sitcom performed live on stage. The Bristol team will be choosing two scripts to be part of their show, and the Manchester team are choosing three, the remainder of the show being prepared by the performers themselves.

Since this is a Halloween show, we're specifically looking for the spooky, the supernatural and the macabre. You can re-write an existing sitcom, tailored to the Halloween theme; or you can come up with something new.

Scripts should be NO MORE THAN 15 pages long, with a solid and exciting CLIFFHANGER around the 8-10 page mark.
If you want to enter a script, simply upload your scripts to the SitsVac files. First read The Brief below for guidelines.

If you have any questions about The Sitcom Trials you can ask at
The Sits Vac Forum
The British Comedy Guide Forum
or Facebook

Scripts should be written to be performed with NO PROPS, SETS or COSTUMES - we're going minimalist on this occasion, since the last show nearly killed us. Ideally, we'd like ONE CONTINUOUS PIECE OF ACTION, with no scene changes, and with no more than SIX CHARACTERS. One day we won't need to say this, but please please please write some strong female characters.

The deadline is: Friday 21st August. There will be a week of voting (usual rules apply: YES=2 / MAYBE=1 / NO=-1), and then the cast will read the top five scripts at a meeting on Sunday 2nd September, and we'll decide which two will make the show. All writers (and performers) are welcome to attend our meetings, particularly if they buy us drinks.

Kev F Sutherland
Executive Producer
Sitcom Trials

(In response to queries on the SitsVac Forum):

On the battle between in-house scripts and online scripts, or between writer-performed material and material read cold, obviously this is always going to give us a clash. Though last week in Manchester the in-house script didn't win, being given the same treatment as all the others (ie they were all script-in-hand and presented radio-style with little rehearsal).

If a sitcom is fully staged and off-book, it has an advantage. The last fully-staged season we did was London in 2009, and you can see from the videos that this raised the quality, though it also levels the playing field. What we then found was writer-performed material often having the edge, that season's overall winner being just such a piece.

Vince's Bristol team are doing a magnificent job of staging the scripts they get and really putting in a lot of rehearsal time. This forthcoming Halloween show will be the first time they've pitted online submissions against their own in-house material, so it will be interesting to see how that fares.

The last show you were referring to in the earlier post was London's Eurovision Sitcom Contest where a writer-performed sitcom which had had a lot of rehearsal time won over online submissions that had only been rehearsed that day. All I can say is that is always likely to happen.

What I'd also like to remind everyone is that, unlike a sitcom competition run like a tournament with a prize (eg our spin-off competitor The Sitcom Mission), The Sitcom Trials is a format that enables sitcoms to be tried out on stage and to find out if they're funny and they work. The voting is simply a mechanism that enables the audience to stay involved in the show and to give it all a structure. They see the ending of the sitcom that wins, so that they're "never more than 10 minutes away from something you might prefer" and we "don't waste your time with anything you don't like."

In short, it's not the winning that counts, it's the taking part.

Kev F
Exec Producer
The Sitcom Trials

I'm new to all this and can't quite work out how the submitted scripts are chosen. Are there only certain members able to vote with the 'yes, no, maybe' votes, or can anybody offer critique and vote? Also, if voters don't get round to reading all the scripts, how do we get a true result of the quality of all the scripts submitted?

I get the bit about the audience selecting the winner so they can see the ending, it's just the first part...the online voting system.

Do we vote here or do we vote on the SitsVac forum or is there somewhere else!?

Finally...are there any props at all available on the day? I mean, can we write basic chairs and tables into the script etc? Would it be possible to have a list of props you can definitely provide? I'm even concerned the characters won't be able to get in and out of a scene on account of there being no doors...ahem.

Thanks for reading this...if you did.

Quote: Joyce @ July 29 2012, 4:06 PM BST

I'm new to all this and can't quite work out how the submitted scripts are chosen. Are there only certain members able to vote with the 'yes, no, maybe' votes, or can anybody offer critique and vote? Also, if voters don't get round to reading all the scripts, how do we get a true result of the quality of all the scripts submitted?

I get the bit about the audience selecting the winner so they can see the ending, it's just the first part...the online voting system.

Do we vote here or do we vote on the SitsVac forum or is there somewhere else!?

Finally...are there any props at all available on the day? I mean, can we write basic chairs and tables into the script etc? Would it be possible to have a list of props you can definitely provide? I'm even concerned the characters won't be able to get in and out of a scene on account of there being no doors...ahem.

Thanks for reading this...if you did.

View original

Thanks for asking, it's always a pleasure to welcome someone new to the Sitcom Trials and have an opportunity to explain how it all works.

The online submissions, as you know, can come from anyone, anywhere. Then anyone, anywhere, is invited to read, review and vote on the sitcoms. Hopefully the writers who have submitted the entries will lead the way with the voting, but any set of reviews & votes count.

It's because we can't expect everyone to read all the scripts, though an amazing number do, that we have the Yes, Maybe and No system. A Yes vote scores 2 points, a Maybe vote scores 1 point and a No vote scores minus 1 point. This means that your votes only affect those scripts upon which you have read and voted, and leave unaffected those scripts that you haven't. It also means that the final table of votes (which you can see here from the latest show) has about as many scripts with minus figures as plus figures.

It's a surprisingly simple system and I can't quite understand why The Sitcom Trials seems to be the only voting show that uses it (if someone is aware of anyone else using our voting system, do let me know. Until then I shall pretend I invented it and am therefore some sort of genius).

Question 2: Do you post your votes here? Yes. You can post them either on the SitsVac forum or the BCG Forum, it all ends up in the same pile.

Question 3: Are there any props available? This depends on which team is producing the show and how they chose to do it. Vince's Bristol team do quite a lot of staging and have put a lot of effort into props and costumes for some scripts, as have some teams in the recent London shows. For most of our recent shows in Manchester and London, however, we have kept things simple and performed scripts as "radio-style" rehearsed readings.

All you really need to concentrate on is making your script funny. If it relies too heavily on props and visuals it may suffer a little with the Sitcom Trials minimal Fringe-theatre treatment. We can, for the record, mime doors. Worst of all would be if you write too many parts, as we have realistically to limit scripts to a sensible number of actors, 4 being our usual maximum per sitcom.

Bring on your script, and best of luck.

Kev F Sutherland
Creator & Executive Producer
The Sitcom Trials

The Halloween Sitcom Trials take place in Bristol on Oct 19 and Manchester Oct 20. Scripts are invited now.

Thanks so much for your reply...still a bit fuzzy about the voting system as, although those scripts not read at all will stay unaffected, they will also have no way of climbing up the scoreboard at all. I guess the key is in choosing a title that grabs the attention of potential reviewers/voters.

Well...I have my two main characters and four small parts and a definite strong older female role. The only thing I find difficult is cramming it all into 15 minutes! It's like trying to shoehorn an elephant into a thimble...hard.

Most scripts will get read, if that's your worry. The vast majority of the writers taking part (usually) put the effort in to go through all the scripts, if only to see what the competition is like. A bad script (with it's plethora of -1 scores) will sink under an unread script, so no-one loses out. Except the bad writer

I don't recall a time when a script was not read by anyone.

There is often a disproportionate amount of scripts beginning with A though. Looking forward to AAAA Aaardvark Cabs at the next one.

Dan

Haha...yes, I noticed all the 'A's and was sorely tempted, I have to say.

Quote: Joyce @ July 30 2012, 12:01 AM BST

Thanks so much for your reply...still a bit fuzzy about the voting system as, although those scripts not read at all will stay unaffected, they will also have no way of climbing up the scoreboard at all.

View original

Or dropping down it. That's the point.

If no-one reads your script you'll sit on zero. Of course quite a few scripts, as the last results table shows, get 20-odd votes and still sit on zero (getting either 1 No vote for every Maybe they get, or 2 No votes for every Yes they get).

I tells ye, it's foolproof.

Kev F

Quote: Joyce @ July 30 2012, 10:40 AM BST

Haha...yes, I noticed all the 'A's and was sorely tempted, I have to say.

View original

I can confirm, from reading the votes, that an increasing number of people choose to vote backwards, ie beginning at the far end of the alphabet and working back to the A end. As t'were.

Okay...you can stop explaining the voting system to me now.
Can we start on the off-side rule now, before moving on to the the Higgs Boson...ta.

My script begins with a 'T', so neither set of reviewers are likely to get to me if they tire half-way through! Sigh... Can't wait for the submissions to come pouring in!

The Higgs-Boson is just a particle formed from the condensation of the high-energy collision that proves the existence of the Higgs field -- the field that interacts with quarks and leptons to give them mass.

Off-side rule? F**k knows...

Dan

Ah...thanks for that basic explanation of the Higgs Boson. Personally, I'm still holding out for a firm SUSY revelation.

My boyfriend's been trying to explain the off-side rule to me for the past nine hours. After quite a bit of hair-pulling, punching and a lot of chair-throwing, I've managed to shut him up. As far as I can see, it involves one man being in the wrong place at the wrong time. To be honest, that's how I feel about the rest of the team, while I'm missing out on Corrie so I can listen to my boyfriend cheer hysterically as they all dry shag each other after someone manages to roll a ball into the goal. Incidentally, it's a huge target so I'm yet to get excited about any of it.

And yet you watch Corrie...

Dan

Actually...I haven't watched Corrie or EE for a good few weeks! I bought a puppy and forgot all about it!! That's all it took! A puppy! I mean, the kids were okay, but this PUPPY is amazing!

I did try that thing people recommend...you know...turn the TV off and actually find out more about your kids. It actually works and I found out how seriously boring they all are...so I turned the TV back on to watch all the patients on Holby prematurely discharging themselves and congregating on the stairs for a mass collapsing session.

I will obviously be tuning in to the soaps once a year just to see who is currently shagging Kat/Dot/Ken/Norris, but that's about it.

Anyway, we're clogging up the forum with mindless talk of particle physics and football...coma...oops dropped off there for a second. Have you got a script on its way for the trials? I'm reading through mine as we speak...will be submitting it very soon!

No, I'm attempting to write one in my lunch break.

Dan